10 Wrestling Matches Better Than They Had Any Right To Be
2. Sabu Vs. The Sandman - ECW Living Dangerously 1998
At the previous year's November To Remember match, Sabu and the Sandman infamously wrestled one of wrestling's worst ever matches. Far too long at twenty minutes-plus for a psychology-free spotfest, the tiny ladders and cardboard tables - which broke even at the merest hint of impact - meant that they were unable to perform even the most rudimentary of hardcore spots.
Though they had nowhere else to go but up, fans had hardly been conditioned to expect a classic. Both men were also wildly inconsistent between the ropes and behind the curtain - not that it dented their popularity amongst the ECW faithful, mind you.
At Living Dangerously '98, they learned their lesson from the NTR debacle by halving the match duration and avoiding protracted, interminable stretches of selling. Instead, they simply laid waste to one another in a compact exhibition of violence which wasted more brain cells than motion.
Like the best ECW matches, the two men made inventive use of the arena to vary the action and compensate for the lack of traditional psychology. The one-dimensional approach was further augmented through a clever heel ruse on the part of Sabu's heel manager Bill Alfonso, who initially deployed Rob Van Dam in a Sabu disguise in an excellent example of the classic bait and switch trope.